I have been doing several "cold boots", even left it powerless for half and hour, and yesterday night when I had not figured the issue was with all pools being "dead" to me, (I had kano.is twice and once de.ckpool) thought my miner was dead since on S2 if all pools are dead it does not show hashing boards or temps(I did not know this at the time) so I thought it had really died and left it powered off without power cord for the night..

Only today found out that other pools were working ok, even the solo original pool and there was nothing wrong with S2 itself, just that I de.ckpool and kano.is are dead to me for some reason.. Was able to hash on them fine before yesterday though...

Hmm seem to have a similar problem then, DE is now working for me as well once I tried 3334 port, 3333 was dead to me too..

As for failing to Kanos pool, that one is dead to my S2 no matter if I use my created username or bitcoin address to mine..

EDIT: Seems port 3333 at DE pool just started working for me.. Still got kanos pool dead though

EDIT2: Spoke too soon, 3333 port on DE not working for me anymore, failed over to 3334..

I'm not the expert here, but I can answer these. (1) Of course. If you're not mining, you're not mining...; (2) you won't find anything; refer to answer no. 1; (3) Why?; (4) This is a pool, but it is strictly solo mining. You only get paid if YOU find the block, and; (6) Nope. BTC only.

Actually, the solo.ckpool.org site gives answers as well.

I'm sensing that you have (like me) spent a fair amount of time on Slush's Pool, which is a great resource for newer folks as its dashboard and frontend are very user-friendly and provide good stats for the payout system they use. It's my failover at the present. In Slush, your scoring hash rate is somehow tied to how consistent ("loyal") you are, ie., how much time you're spending connected and mining...I run about 2Th/s at the moment, and it takes sometimes 2-3 hours to achieve "normal" scoring hash rate after being down for any length of time at all.

Kano's pool ROI is different; you get paid your comparative share, but it is not held in abeyance for some sort of threshold. It's sent manually as soon as the required confirmations are complete. Again, he's got a good explanation on it at www.kano.is (ie., ckpool). When I finish my self-imposed solo mining expedition on the 8th, I'll be going to Kano I believe.

Dunno if that's helpful.

Oh...short postscript...I never waste energy actually computing "chance." You're either lucky, or you're not... 

answer for 1+2  
power on = you can win  
power off = you can't win

answer for 3 is complex   so here is one way go to the bitcoinwisdom

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty  punch in your hash power and look at the daily number of btc earned say it is   5 th  which right now gives you 0.02421 btc in a day

so 25 btc divide by  0.02421 = 1032 to 1 to hit a block in a day  this is a close estimate not perfect.

4) This is all or nothing baby!

6) yes but we don't do it and won't do it.

Why so few blocks lately? Has the recent difficulty increases really made this much difference?

I notice there's 935TH mining at the moment.

I know a gypsy, perhaps I should buy a lucky rock from her....

So I already mentioned that I have never, but has anyone else here pulled anything close to a 100b share? This new diff is a heart-stopper.

I don't think you realise how wise those words really are ...

Thanks. I've considered this numerous times but there's something quite nice and personal with the user chosen donations once a block is found that feels quite rare in today's bitcoin mining world and I'd almost hate to give that up.